Still Broken: New York State Legislative Reform

Still Broken: New York State Legislative Reform is the 2008 update of the Brennan Center's 2004 and 2006 reports on the New York state legislative process. The report finds that the legislative process remains broken, and offers concrete recommendations for reform

Legislative Report: Healthcare Reform

Before Thanksgiving, H.R. 3200 and the Baucus Bill will reach the floor of the House and Senate, respectively, where they will be vigorously debated and are ultimately likely to pass.Marsha Blackburn, health care reform, healthcare reform, healthcare, health care, H.R. 3200, Baucus Bill, Tennessee, insurance

SB 909/HB 1408 Virginia Fair Housing Law; unlawful discriminatory housing practices

This report provides a legislative racial impact analysis of Senate Bill (SB) 909, a proposed bill in the Virginia General Assembly, to expand the Virginia Fair Housing Law to include lawful sources of income. Specifically, this report examines state and county source of income laws and their variances by race and ethnicity

Paid Family Leave in the United States

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of paid family leave in the United States, summarizes state-level family leave insurance programs, notes PFL policies in other advanced-economy countries, and notes recent federal legislative action to increase access to paid family leave

Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senators’ Offices, FY2009-FY2013

[Excerpt] This report provides pay data for 16 staff position titles that are typically deployed in Senators’ offices. The positions include the following: Administrative Director; Casework Supervisor; Caseworker; Chief of Staff; Communications Director; Counsel; Executive Assistant; Field Representative; Legislative Assistant; Legislative Correspondent; Legislative Director; Press Secretary; Scheduler; “Specials Director,” a combined category that includes the job titles Director of Projects, Director of Special Projects, Director of Federal Projects, Director of Grants, Projects Director, or Grants Director; Staff Assistant; and State Director. Senators’ staff pay data for the years FY2009-FY2013 were derived from a random sampling of Senators’ offices in which at least one staff member worked in a position in each year

Philadelphia's Councilmanic Prerogative: How It Works and Why It Matters

This report examines the Philadelphia legislative practice known as "councilmanic prerogative," through which individual City Council members make nearly all of the land use decisions in their jurisdictions. This report on councilmanic prerogative is grounded in extensive analysis of city records and interviews with dozens of government officials, developers, political figures, academics, and community advocates. It is the first independent examination of the practice in the city

Draft report: Workshop On Legislative Drafting For Democratic Social Change, Kabul, December 2-12, 2004

Draft report on the "Workshop On Legislative Drafting For Democratic Social Change, Kabul, December 2-12, 2004

Comments on the Research Report Concerning the Legislative Drafting Act

This is a critique of the structure and contents of the Bhutan research report concerning the Legislative Drafting Act

Congressional Lawmaking: A Perspective On Secrecy and Transparency

[Excerpt] Openness is fundamental to representative government. Yet the congressional process is replete with activities and actions that are private and not observable by the public. How to distinguish reasonable legislative secrecy from impractical transparency is a topic that produces disagreement on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Why? Because lawmaking is critical to the governance of the nation. Scores of people in the attentive public want to observe and learn about congressional proceedings. Yet secrecy is an ever-present part of much legislative policymaking; however, secrecy and transparency are not “either/or” constructs. They overlap constantly during the various policymaking stages. The objectives of this report are four-fold: • first, to outline briefly the historical and inherent tension between secrecy and transparency in the congressional process; • second, to review several common and recurring secrecy/transparency issues that emerged again with the 2011 formation of the Joint Select Deficit Reduction Committee; • third, to identify various lawmaking stages typically imbued with closed door activities; and • fourth, to close with several summary observations. This report will not be updated

U.S. Customs and Border Protection: Trade Facilitation, Enforcement, and Security

[Excerpt] This report describes and analyzes import policy and CBP’s role in the U.S. import process. (The report does not cover CBP’s role in the U.S. export control system.) The first section of the report describes the three overarching goals of U.S. import policy and the tension among them. Second, the report provides a legislative history of customs laws, followed by an overview of the U.S. import process as it operates today. Third, the import process and CBP’s role in it are discussed. The final section highlights several policy issues that Congress may consider in its oversight role or as part of customs or trade legislation, including measures seeking to provide additional trade facilitation benefits to importers and others enrolled in “trusted trader” programs, to improve enforcement of intellectual property and trade remedy laws, to strengthen cargo scanning practices, and/or to promote modernization of customs data systems, among other issues. A list of trade-related acronyms used in the report is provided in Appendix A